Serial Dates

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

Recently a co-worker came to me with a work sheet that she had been using to
track dates that invoices were received. She told me the sheet was working
fine one day. The next day, when she entered a date, the cell would only
return the serial date no matter how she formatted the cell. The actual date
would appear correct in the formula bar, but the cell showed only the serial
date. We have tried everything I can think of to get the cells to format to
show the date but have not had any success. I finally solved her delima by
copying all the data to another new worksheet and using the paste special -
values only command. I was just wondering if anyone has ever heard of such
an incident and what might have caused it. Thanks.

Ron

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

Hi everyone,

Recently a co-worker came to me with a work sheet that she had been using to
track dates that invoices were received. She told me the sheet was working
fine one day. The next day, when she entered a date, the cell would only
return the serial date no matter how she formatted the cell. The actual date
would appear correct in the formula bar, but the cell showed only the serial
date. We have tried everything I can think of to get the cells to format to
show the date but have not had any success. I finally solved her delima by
copying all the data to another new worksheet and using the paste special -
values only command. I was just wondering if anyone has ever heard of such
an incident and what might have caused it. Thanks.

Ron

What do you mean by "serial date" ??


--ron

 

[Guest]

Hi Ron,

By "Serial Date", I mean the number of days since January 1, 1990. If I
enter today's date in the cell in question, it returns 38724 in the cell.
The formula bar shows "1/7/06".

HTH

Ron

 

[Dave Peterson]

Your coworker may have been looking at the formula view:

Tools|View|uncheck formulas.

You can toggle this setting by hitting
ctrl-`
(ctrl-backquote (to the left of 1/! on my USA keyboard))

 

[Guest]

Hi Dave,

You were absolutely correct. Thank you and everyone else on this forum.
The help I have received here has been invaluable. Thanks again.

Ron